


Belong/Bones

by seaofolives



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodhi Rook Lives, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Canon Timeline, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Lives, Everyone Is Alive, Fluff and Angst, Growing Old Together, Growing Up Together, M/M, Marriage, Married Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Minor Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, POV Baze Malbus, Post-Canon, Post-Movie(s), Post-Rogue One, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie(s), Pre-Rogue One, Romantic Angst, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-14 12:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11782812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: They have always seen themselves as being married—in the same way that they had always known that they would one day be married. Even when that decision was made when they were no more than 15, 16 years of age, and when the ceremony took place when they were no more than 16- and 17-years old.





	Belong/Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivory_leigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivory_leigh/gifts).



> Written for [ivory_leigh](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ivory_leigh/pseuds/ivory_leigh) as part of [~dailyspiritassassin’s summer 2017 fanworks exchange](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/spiritassassinexchange).

They have always seen themselves as being married—in the same way that they had always known that they would one day be married. Even when that decision was made when they were no more than 15, 16 years of age, and when the ceremony took place when they were no more than 16- and 17-years old. Barely legal but though their minds were young and their bodies still growing, their hearts were strong and resolute and where they will fail, they knew their devotion to each other and the Force would not. 

That their union would not be recognized by the Temple of the Kyber, much less the Holy City, was no cause for discouragement—such laws of men should not be a hindrance to the will of the Force. Besides, they have always agreed that it was the sincerity of the couple and the solemnity of the matrimony that mattered at the end of the day—not how closely one could read a textbook. 

So when someone close to them expressed her intention to do them one last service before she embarked on a lifelong pilgrimage, they and their friends wasted no time to arrange the ceremony. White inner dresses were rented, robes trimmed and dyed red, black silk hats borrowed without permission. 

Everything came together in a small cavern deep within the Kyber Mines, illuminated by the natural light radiating within the great crystals imbued by the Force, surrounding them from wall to ceiling. Baze could not think of a better place to seal this bond founded in the Force. They tingled, each and every one of them, at every move made within their sacred gaze, at every shift in the air. 

“One bow to the Force that binds you!”

Their dear officiant’s voice echoed beautifully, round, deep and bold, pleasant to the ears, making the crystals sing and sigh. She stood between them in the humble robes of a Disciple, and at her signal, they bowed to the scarlet ribbon which tied them both at their elbows, weighed down in the middle by a flower piece made from the same fabric—a symbol of the Force that bound them. 

“One bow to those who stand witness to your union!”

A witness of one; they could not risk a great number of them sneaking out after the evening prayers. It was a sacrifice that had to be made and one done with the blessings of everyone involved. So Baze and his groom bowed to their dear officiant, and for a second there, the sanctity of the union had almost collapsed, what with the crystals giggling with them and all. 

“One bow,” their friend persisted, face crumpled by struggling mirth, “to your sworn partner!”

He would never forget how Chirrut looked on their wedding day, standing at the cusp of youth and manhood. His face was soft and smooth, but his robe was full of his shoulders, his long arms, his figure straight as an uneti tree, but not so harsh that it no longer resembled a bird. _A starbird,_ Baze thought all of a sudden. He was getting married to a starbird. 

They bowed to the waist, facing each other. When they rose, Chirrut had a glowing grin on his face, his excitement practically tangible from where Baze stood. He felt the thrill run down him, and broke out in a sparkling grin himself. 

Their officiant prepared the honeyed wine which they drank with their arms crossed around each other. Thus they were declared man and man, to the cheers of no one but themselves and the crystals. All the same, they came together for a triumphant kiss, teeth clacking and all. They were married; all was well now. 

Holding Chirrut’s hands tight, Baze began his wedding vow, with the one friend and the Force as his witnesses. “I will never leave you,” he said. And that was as far as he got before he broke down completely into tears. Chirrut soldiered on for a bit longer than that but not without making a mess of himself and the sleeves of his robe. After that, the ceremony was concluded. They met up with their friends in a tapcafe where they celebrated their happy union until the last evening bell had rung in the Temple. Every one of them hurried off with hasty congratulations and dirty jokes. 

Baze and Chirrut would spend the night in a room at the inn next door. 

It was their wedding gift from their friends who’d pooled enough knots to book them one of the smaller suites available. Baze couldn’t believe his luck— _their_ luck; he pondered this, lying on his back, across Chirrut lying on his stomach, feet up, one sandal gone, his chin on the heels of his palms, fingers tapping his cheeks, himself smiling. They were both still dressed in their crimson wedding robes although the silk hats had to go on account of being lent in surprise. Even the bed cover was red—as were the strings of ribbons and slips of papers with well-wishes strewn along the wide walls. They would sleep well tonight, Baze thought. 

“What are you looking at?” he asked his new husband, the thought of which sent a thrill up and down his spine. 

Chirrut tilted his head one way then another, his last sandal hanging for its life by his socked toes. “I am looking at the man I married. And I’m thinking about how lucky I am to have chosen someone so handsome!”

“You are blind!” Baze laughed, giddy, perhaps a little tipsy from the day’s festivities. Chirrut’s answer filled his ears with his blood and his face with a beam, his eyes with tears—but if Chirrut would tell him tonight that his name was Baze Malbus, he would still laugh as if it was the best joke in the entire galaxy. “Handsome can’t be an observable factor.”

“Why not?” Chirrut pouted, his milky blue eyes indeed missing Baze’s exact line of vision. “You have a handsome voice.”

“What else?”

Chirrut grinned. He hummed as he thought, tossing his head one way, and then the other again. Baze felt his heart beating inside his chest, ready to break free, grab the man who was _his husband_ and kiss him. “Your…hands are handsome.” Baze burst out in laughter at the pun. Chirrut snickered. “But in all honesty, your hands are two of my most favorite parts of you. They are big, and warm, and strong. And never wrong.”

He had yet to finish speaking when Baze was already crawling to him, careful not to disrupt. He laid on his tummy as Chirrut did, folded his arms under his chin and peered closely at the young man. He saw how quickly Chirrut’s face turned red, and his grin stretch wider. 

“So, what’s your favorite part of me?” Baze asked. 

“Mmm…” Chirrut looked up, his lips one straight, slightly tipped-up line. His eyes rolled towards Baze again when he prompted, “Tell me yours and I will tell you mine?” He grinned again. 

Baze reflected the look on his face. He hummed in turn, his feet, also raised, chasing after Chirrut’s pace so that they swung in unison to his. “I love…this,” he said, as he bumped their noses together, much to Chirrut’s ticklish humor. “Because it is not too big, and not too small. And they belong to my handsome husband.”

“That is all?” Chirrut laughed. 

“I love it also when you scrunch it up, because it reminds me of a bunny.” Baze chuckled when Chirrut demonstrated it to him. “I love your eyes because I think they are honest. I also love these,” he boosted himself forward an inch so that their lips could touch, “because they are soft, and they make me feel a hundred things all at once.”

“Such as?” Chirrut was thrilled. 

Baze kissed him once, “Love,” and again, “joy,” and again and again and again, “comfort, courage and desire.”

“Desire?” Chirrut’s voice was practically shaking when he echoed Baze, with a beam that threatened to break the boundaries of his facial structure. “Like this?” he pushed himself up his knees, crawling forward. 

Baze pushed himself up his own knees and fell back, exposing the butterflies in his stomach, barely hiding it when when he looped each of his arms around his husband, hands settling on his back. Chirrut trapped him side to side with his. He received him in another kiss, but this time, they held on longer, languishing in each other’s presence, warmth, breath, taste, everything. They were married, they were each other’s husband. Their kiss was right and proper, their kiss was theirs and theirs alone. 

“Wait. Chirrut,” Baze choked, in a hurry before Chirrut found his jawline and his resolve was shattered by the strength of what stirred between their legs. “One last thing,” he struggled, “before everything else.”

“What?” Chirrut asked in a quiet, curious voice, patient but nearly breathless. He flicked his tongue across his lips and Baze got the message. 

Baze spoke quickly, racing his tongue and himself before he tripped all over both and wasted the moment again. “I will never leave you,” he began. “For as long as I breathe, and for as long as there is the Force, I will always be with you.” He continued, even as Chirrut beamed widely, and the tears pooled around his bluish eyes. “Come hail or high water, no matter my weaknesses, or the temptations, you will always have me by your side. I will protect you, care for you and feed you. You need only reach,” he went for the hand over his shoulder, “and you need only breathe and I will be there. As the Force wills it.”

“I will never fear,” Chirrut responded, jumping at his cue, “and I will never want for as long as I have you. You are my shelter, my coat, my rock, my hearth. You will have me, as you have sworn yourself to me. I will protect you, honor you, comfort you and love you,” he gasped, sipping back his courage from the Force when his tears and Baze’s own welling emotions threatened to choke him, “and I swear it upon the Force that binds us, and guides us, that you will never want, or fear, or feel lonely or cold or hungry for as long as you have me. This I swear in the presence of my husband,” he grinned when Baze laughed, “and with the Force as my witness.”

Baze raced him to another kiss, moving his hands to the belt tied around Chirrut’s waist to relieve him of the burden of the robe. Chirrut did the same for him but it was problematic when they were more concerned about renewing each and every kiss that was broken by their jealous lungs. It would be some time yet before their young bodies could seal their union a second time that night. 

Those were the days before the Temple fell.

⚭

He dropped his bowl, the distinct meeting of clay on clay stunning Baze out of his introspection to return, surprised, to Chirrut’s presence in the room.

“You said you would never leave,” Chirrut reminded him. 

Baze swallowed back his growl as he set aside his own bowl of broth, and mixed grains and chopped crickets and weeds—whatever there was left in Jedha. “I did not say I would leave! Chirrut, your robe,” he sighed, the distress tangible in his voice. “If you intend to wear this to the last of your days, you ought to better care for it.”

He got up, leaving Chirrut by their bedrolls as he went to the kitchen to take the rag he used to wipe the sink. “All the rainwater’s almost used up, it will be some time before I can wash your robe again.”

Chirrut said nothing, even as Baze returned to clean up the slop on his clothes, moving as gently as his mood allowed him. Baze did not look at him. 

“You said,” Chirrut started again, “you would never leave.”

Finally, Baze looked up to him, at those furrowed brows, that subtle, but present frown on his face. He felt his tension melt, the power of his mood wither and fade like smoke. “I am not leaving,” he said again, slowly. 

“Then what is all this talk about insurgency?”

Just like that, Baze was irritated again. It felt like a thorn needling him at the center of his chest, not quite pushing to break the skin but not negligible either. He flew up to his feet in a bid to control his temper, pitching the rag back to the sink. “Just because I mean to help them does not mean I have to leave.”

“You said you would help them recruit,” Chirrut argued. Apparently, both of them had forgotten that they were hungry, as they so often were since the Empire arrived. “You also said that they would look into the corners of Jedha to find new blood.”

“So they would!” Baze cried, throwing his arms out, spinning to face the man seated on the floor. “What is the problem with that?”

“You said _Jedha_ ,” Chirrut continued, silencing Baze, “Not _NiJedha_ , as you would.” He waited for Baze to speak, but Baze found that he could not. So he did. “I know your nuances, Baze Malbus. Do not think you could have hidden that from me.”

He looked at Chirrut, and for a long second, that was all he could do—stand and look. Chirrut, ever patient, waited for him to continue. He did so with a sigh. “That means nothing,” he said, trying to sound comforting. “I will only be gone for a week or two and then I will be back.”

“You will be gone,” Chirrut repeated after him, “for a week.”

Baze felt his blood shooting up to his chest, hot like fire. He breathed in, and then out, trying to calm himself before he spoke again. “Yes. A week. Or two, as you have heard perfectly. Is that all you’re going to do? Repeat my words back to me?” But it was too late—the acid had already been planted in his tongue. 

“I am _trying_ to make you realize what it is you are saying—to hear yourself,” Chirrut said. “Are you sure you want to do this while Imperial activities are on the rise? There is not a day that goes by where we do not hear anything about the Empire and their atrocities. Each day, they grow bolder and bolder.”

“That is why we have to help the insurgents— _I_ have to help them!” Baze reasoned, the walls reflecting the timber of his voice. “Each day, the Empire grows stronger, each day, we lose more things to them. Our ports, our food, our _people_. Our Temple, Chirrut!” he said, stepping towards the blind man. “We lost our Temple and our order to them. Someone has to do something about this before they take away even the dirt in our nails!”

“And that is you?” Chirrut asked, brows deep. “You think this plan of yours is going to work?”

Baze snarled, glaring at him. “Well, it certainly is much better than just sitting around here, waiting for the world to end,” he muttered, huffing off back to the kitchen. There was nowhere else for him to go while they were having this conversation, and the smallness of their house was not contributing to it. His head was hurting, and his chest was full. He wanted to explode but he couldn’t do it here because it was too cramped and that only fed to the cycle. 

“Sitting around?” Chirrut demanded, the space catching the knife’s edge in his voice perfectly. “You think that is all that I am doing here while you are gallivanting in the Holy City?” With a sharp tap of his uneti staff, he rose finally, barely missing the bowl of clay he had earlier dropped on the floor. “You speak as if you have done something worthwhile yourself!”

“So you admit that that is all you have been doing,” Baze accused, rounding back to him. But Chirrut would not be intimidated by his rising voice or his hounding approach, standing perfectly as an arrow planted on the ground, equally stubborn. “While I have been going around, adding my weight to the enemies of the Empire. To protect our home, to take it back!”

“With nothing to show for it!”

“Maybe if you wouldn’t just stay inside, you could help me fight the Empire out of our gates!” Baze roared, whipping his finger out to their own sealed door. “You are my husband, Chirrut Imwe. You are supposed to be supporting me in everything that I do!”

“I will support you in your mission to overthrow the invaders, even if you think it is not my own, as well,” Chirrut snarled, frowning darkly, a fire flickering behind his blind eyes. “But if it involves you throwing your life away because of some stupid decision made in some cheap alley then, dear husband, I apologize but I _must_ put my foot down. I made a sacred vow to protect you and I _will_ do exactly what I said I would!”

“By holding me back?” Baze asked, thoroughly unimpressed. “By keeping me here even when you know I could be of more use out there?!” He flung his hand outwards again as though Chirrut could see and not for the first time, he wished he could. So he could see how distressed he was, how angry he felt where words seemed to fail. How much he was shaking, so pent up with injustice and weakness. Baze Malbus was a strong man and weakness was not something that suited him. “What is it that you do, anyway? What is it,” he jabbed a finger to himself, “that you think I should be doing instead?”

“You could, be praying,” Chirrut said with the tiniest sigh. “You could be keeping the faith, instead of throwing your lot around aimlessly. The Force will not let us be led astray.”

“The Force?” Baze growled, staring at his husband in stunned incredulity. “The faith? You _still_ think that is all this is about? That if you pray harder, that if you starve longer, then maybe, just _maybe_ , the great Force would grant you your wish!”

“Do not speak of the Force in that manner,” Chirrut snapped, breathing fire through his gritted teeth. His knuckles were white from gripping his staff too tight. “You, of _all_ , should know that that is not how the Force works!”

“The Force is with me and I am one with the Force!” Baze roared the anthem of their faith at the faithful blind, their walls quivering at the power of his frustrations. Their faith—or what used to be his. And just the thought of how much of his life he had dedicated to this _illusion_ they call the Force was enough to make his chest tighten and burn with insult. “And I fear nothing, for all is as the Force wills it. If this is true, then why are our friends dead?” He pulled back for a minute, reining his sorrow in with lashes of his fury. “Tell me, why does the Force will the destruction of its own Temple? Its believers and its defenders? If it truly exists, then where was it when the Stormtroopers invaded us?!” he bellowed. They were a child’s questions, spoken in the voice of a man. 

Chirrut’s face transformed with the pain of the responsibility of having to answer. “Do not ask me,” he whispered, but the softness had only lent an edge to what may as well be a warning, “what the will of the Force is. These are not the questions you were raised to ask.”

“And now I know why,” Baze said, nodding. “I know now why we shouldn’t be questioning the existence of something that _doesn’t_ exist.”

Chirrut flinched. 

“I used to think I knew how the Force worked among us but now I see that in this room, there had been two blind people—but now I see clearly. Finally. But you,” Baze flung his hand to Chirrut, frowning deeply, “after all that it’s done to us, you are still hiding under its skirt.”

“I am not hiding,” Chirrut snarled. 

“If you are not hiding, then you should be out there fighting!” Baze shouted, his voice filling the void of their house. “With me!” He jabbed his finger to his chest. “Your husband.” He threw his hands out, the weight of everything that had happened, the days pulling him backwards, like a drunk man stumbling. “But ever since we lost the Temple, I have started to feel you less and less at my side. That sometimes it feels like _I_ ,” he laid his hand on his heart, “am the only one fighting for the both of us. And you wouldn’t even let me do this? For _us_?” Chirrut would have his reasons, Baze was sure. But he had heard enough of the Force which had abandoned them. If Chirrut was contented to live blindly in this squalor, waiting for the treacherous Force to save them, he was not. 

He was done with this. 

“That’s it,” Baze said, throwing his hands up. “I am done. I have had enough of this.” He did not wait for Chirrut to reply when he turned and marched for their drawers at the back of the house. He punched one open and grabbed at its contents. 

“You said you would never leave,” Chirrut chased after him, but he refused to turn away from the sack in his hands as he loaded it with his clothes, what little he had. But his old robes, he left at the bottom of the drawer. “You said,” Chirrut went on, his voice rising, “that you would never leave me! Come hail or high water—!!”

“I know what I said!” Baze roared back, finally whirling to the man. Chirrut stood rigid and pale, his jaw tensed and his hands wrapped like ice around his staff. He stared with wide blue eyes that saw nothing. He could do nothing. Baze wagged an accusing finger at his face. “But you don’t know what is happening out there! We aren’t children anymore, Chirrut. The Force will no longer save us.”

“How could you be so faithless, Baze Malbus?” Chirrut hissed, his face twisting at the ugly truth. “After what we have been through, you are simply going to give up?”

“I am not the one who has given up, Chirrut,” Baze said, marching to him for the last time. “It is you,” he finished. He would give Chirrut all the time he needed to think about what he just said. 

All. The time. 

“Baze, wait,” Chirrut pleaded as he stormed past him, catching him at his wrist but he beat him off and set himself free. He heard the uneti stick drop to the ground, the impact sharp as a whip, and Chirrut stumbling after his wake, but still he refused to turn. “Baze, wait!!” He was done waiting, though. If Chirrut wasn’t yet, he could wait on his own and come back to him once he’d finally made up his mind. “Baze! _Baze!!_ ”

He fled the house with Chirrut howling out his name.

⚭

He had meant the words before, and even now their meaning was not lost on him. But when temples fall, even love crumbles.

It barely took him a day away from his beloved NiJedha to realize that nothing could be further from the truth. When temples fall, even the truest love could take a blow but it would not crumble as easily as sand and stone. Baze promised himself then at the back of a speeder bus racing down the desert that he would be back in a week or two, finally with something to show for it. He just needed Chirrut to see that one couldn’t hold the Force in the same way one could hold a good blaster. They would talk again, and Chirrut would understand then. 

That illusion lasted all of an evening—then at night, he could hear nothing but the crack of Chirrut’s uneti stick on the floor, the crash of clay on clay and the echoes of Chirrut screaming his name. He slept fitfully; he could no longer remember how Chirrut’s touch felt, haunted with thoughts of never feeling it again, of having been the one to push away the last time he would ever do. Come the next morning, he started to think of how he was going to get back—to NiJedha, to Chirrut, to Chirrut’s arms—and then he knew he had made the worst mistake. 

He thought about what he could say to excuse himself—he felt sick, his own husband was sick, there was an emergency back home, he’d left the stove on. He thought about simply disappearing but remembered that they were all natives of NiJedha and would see each other again back home after the campaign. In the end, he simply said that he had to go back to his husband. He owed Chirrut that much honesty. 

The leader was a Pantoran who’d asked him to stay for even just a few more days but being himself married with children, he understood the longings of a man. Baze agreed to compromise instead—he would stay on until the first tribe in the list whose dialect only he, among the insurgents, knew how to speak, an effect of his education as a Guardian in the past. 

They ended the meeting in amicable terms, sealing it with a firm handshake. Baze did not expect to see the man blatantly eavesdropping on the other side of the bus, behind which he and the Pantoran met. The eavesdropper was bald with a long, thin, mustache, human, dressed in a patched up outfit that resembled a vac suit assembled from different pieces of fabric and cheap armor. He pushed himself off the side of the bus, with a haughty cough.

“Coward. And I thought _he_ wore the skirt,” he sneered, smirking. 

Baze frowned and stared the man down as he turned and left, squeezing all his irritation into the tiny space of his fist. He let the insult go as soon as the offender was out of sight—he didn’t need to complicate his exit. 

That all changed when evening fell, as Baze went around the camp, bidding goodbye and good luck to the rebels who were briefly his comrades. _Good luck_ —not a blessing of the Force. The Force itself would know what it would take to bring its lost sheep back into the fold. 

“Wifey duties calling?” someone said. 

Absolute silence filled the camp, except for the leader’s sharp warning. Those who were smarter than all of them combined saw this as a great opportunity to make themselves scarce. 

Baze stopped near the last of the tents, closest to the ring of speeders to turn and devote due attention to his new friend, who stood as brazenly before him as he once did, a complete stranger to Baze’s combat history. Around them still were other gawkers jonesing for a brawl. 

“You know, it’s men like you that’s brought the Empire to Jedha,” the bald man continued. “They come marching in, putting on airs but instead of beating them off, you go and run back to your house, hide under your wives’, your mothers’ skirts. You can’t even do one thing for your own home!”

“Now that’s enough!” their leader barked. 

“Well, go on, then,” the man spat nastily, crossing his arms over his chest. “Run, hide, that’s all you’re ever good at, anyway.”

Well, Baze thought that for once, he wasn’t wrong there. The crack of the uneti stick echoed in his head again, and Chirrut’s cry as he left their home. He might have been ready to hit the man if his words hadn’t just hit home first. He may still hate him, but he had enough shame not to react violently to the truth, to let the tension thaw from his fist. Instead, he turned again to walk away. 

“I ought to hand it to you for making it this far away from home,” the man continued against his better judgment. “That I can respect. But the man you married?” he snorted. “I have no kind words for him. It says a lot about him that he chose to hide than to come out here and fight with you. Selfish cowards like him are the reason why the Empire has taken control of the Holy City, he would lick their boots if it earned him a day. He doesn’t deserve our help, the only thing he deserves is a blaster bolt to the—”

Baze squeezed the last word back down his throat; he’d come marching fast as soon as the man had called Chirrut selfish and a coward while their spectators had run away before that hand could end up on any of their necks. The leader screamed for him to let him go—but wise man that he was, that was all he did. 

Leaving the bald man to scratch at his captor’s grasp stubbornly, desperate enough to tear through Baze’s dark skin, no matter if he would have had better luck clawing at a rock. Insults on his own personage, he could excuse but slander directed to his husband, the bastard may as well have called down the Empire on him. 

Baze gave the man five seconds to understand his position in his hand before he drew him close and bent low enough to meet his frantic eyes. “You weren’t there,” he growled, “when the Temple fell around our ears. You weren’t there to see your friends picked off like fish in a barrel, simply because of the clothes they wore and _you weren’t there_ , to see your teacher run over by a battle tank simply because she was in the way! You weren’t there to take the children in your arms before the Empire killed them, and all you could do was to run away while your friends, your brothers and sisters, died serving the very faith that ended them. And you couldn’t go back because you had to save the children, you had to sacrifice your friends for the safety of the children. 

“But I can tell you who was,” he hissed, spittle flying, his breath burning at the man’s face. “I can tell you whose arms it was who herded the survivors, who carried the young, the old, the sick and dying. Whose arms tried to heal and whose hands dug the cremation pit even when they were chafed, and his nails were broken and his arms were swollen from the work.” At the end of his long speech, he paused briefly, and shook his head, keeping the man’s fear in sight of his glare. “But I won’t—because his name does not deserve to be spoken by a man who, like as not, was hiding under the table while the Empire came for us.” 

The man had ceased his efforts to escape since Baze had spoken, choosing to gape dumbly at the large man whose hand held his life completely. Baze gave no warning when he heaved him back to the ground, like a grenade that scattered the insurgents back in alarm. 

He showed himself out, stopping next to a particularly garish swoop bike with an overcompensating blaster slung across it. No one protested when he transferred the weapon across his shoulders and picked at the hovercraft’s wires to jumpstart it. 

Baze didn’t waste time familiarizing himself with the controls before he took off without another word spared. He would find time for that later, preferably when he was well away from watchful eyes, and that much closer back to Chirrut.

⚭

In total, he was gone from the Holy City for three days and two nights—possibly longer if he’d chosen to take a break in the middle of the journey, but the callings of the heart were stronger than the needs of the body.

Ultimately, it was the swoop bike that gave up on him, breaking down just as soon as it had ascended the mesa. Baze, sore from the travel, windburned, and hungry, left it for the people to do as they wanted with while he finished the rest of the way on foot. Many of those he passed had turned to him in recognition, but most of them did well and kept to themselves. Out of all those who tried to speak with him, though, only one of them managed to get past his dogged focus—an aqualish who owned a corner stall in the Old Market, near where Chirrut usually begged for alms. 

Usually—not always. 

“Guardian Imwe hasn’t been coming for the past three or four days now,” the aqualish said, wringing his outer dress, squirming. Worry rang clearly in his tight voice. “I hope he’s okay…”

Baze thanked him for the information, turned back and went home. 

That was where he found him—with the door left open to let in the air, the sight of which had allowed Baze to hope. All things felt normal; he dared to smile at it, as well as the distant city bustle and the sound of his feet upon his approach. 

And the tap of a stick upon the concrete along with the responding footsteps. He appeared through the door in short time, in his black robes and the splash of red down his legs. 

Hands on his staff, the blind Guardian stood by the doorway. 

“Chirrut,” Baze gasped softly, thrilled, quiet laughter at the back of his throat as he hurried forward. 

“I guess that did not work out for you, did it?” Chirrut asked. 

Baze didn’t reply, too delighted by the presence of his husband to have a mind for it. “Chirrut!” he called again, reaching out with his long arms and wrapping the man in them. He felt Chirrut’s chest bump into his own as he held him tight, smelt the sweat and the sand, the oil of his hair from the back of his collar and almost felt his knees go weak with relief. He was still there, his husband. He had waited for him as he’d hoped he would and he would no longer be haunted by his scream, or the sound of his stick on the floor. 

“Chirrut, I am here,” Baze said, kissing him on his cheek. “I’m back. I am sorry I left but I won’t leave now.”

He hung onto him for a while longer, and then Chirrut moved, forcing his hand with the staff through the space between their chests so he could break their contact and step back, regaining his freedom. “I suppose you will want tea,” Chirrut suggested. 

Baze was stunned, as if Chirrut had knocked the wind out of his lungs by his words alone. That was not the kind of welcome he’d been expecting. He stumbled forward in confusion, into the shade of their tiny house, watching Chirrut move carefully around their kitchen. He’d left his staff to lean on one side of the counter while he felt for the kettle and the switch of the stove. Baze moved quickly to assist—

The staff was up and threatening to break his nose before he could get any closer to the blind man. Chirrut held it like a saber, ready to pierce. When Baze got the message, he put it down, and switched the stove on. 

Baze felt shaken—it had been ages since Chirrut had issued him such a warning, he couldn’t even remember what it was they had fought about. 

“Chirrut,” he sputtered, ready to tip his balance and stumble right back into his husband’s personal space no matter the cost. “I came back for you.”

“Yes, and I suppose you will want some form of congratulations and a celebration for that,” Chirrut responded as he turned to him, or rather to his shoulder—even when Baze knew he could perfectly hear his heart racing from where he stood. “Unfortunately, I am not in the position to prepare either. Money is scarce these days, and I’m not sure I ought to thank you for fulfilling your duties as my spouse. It’s nothing special, after all.”

“Chirrut, I am not asking for anything more than you!” Baze said, staring wildly at his husband’s stoic features. “Chirrut, I know I have made a mistake. I knew this the moment I stepped out of NiJedha—”

“Well, that’s nice.”

Baze would never forget the smile Chirrut had put on for his thoughts that somehow managed to be both happy and empty, his congratulations and his thanks. This was worse than a nightmare, worse than Chirrut leaving him and disappearing forever. Better not to see the man anymore than to see him cold and distant, and so close to touch. Baze had done this. He had no excuses. 

“I know I should have turned back!” Baze cried. “I know what I did. And I wish I had not.” His voice fell, he shook his head. “I wish I could change my mind, I could have…Chirrut, I made a mistake. I am sorry, please forgive me. Please, I love you.”

“So you have said,” Chirrut said, raising his hand near the kettle. Then he flicked the switch off to kill the stove, and advised him, “Tea’s ready.”

When the Empire had taken over the Temple and slaughtered those who resisted and were caught, Baze realized the true meaning of a heartbreak—it was a tightness in the chest, a fullness that stopped one from breathing, and crying no matter how sick with emotions one felt. 

This was worse—like poison eating up his heart, rust leaking into his bile, his guts turning him black, corrupting everything that it touched. Fatigue was only one symptom of it; Baze felt weightless, paper thin, like dried leaves. He was hollow inside him, except for a fever at his core. He had tried to make amends but he had been too blind to see that it was too late the moment he stormed out of their house. He was married to a starbird, whose vengefulness burned and burned. 

But he was still desperate enough to find the strength in his knees to touch the ground, to bring his hands up to Chirrut’s waist, and hide his face on the train of his robe. “Please,” he wheezed, shaking all over in tight sobs, “Please take me back. I made a mistake. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Please take me back, please…” _Please,_ a word and a sentence all at once, repeated over and over like a litany of the faithful. 

Chirrut received his petitions, standing absolutely still. He laid a tender hand at the top of his wild hair, and he squeezed him back, crying harder. “Baze,” he began gently. “Be careful—the tea is hot.”

⚭

For several days, this was how their lives passed—like planets spinning around a single orbit without any hopes of ever meeting. They did not speak, did not touch, did not even look at each other. They served their own tea and dinner and washed their own dishes. Baze dedicated his time to sweeping and polishing the place clean but Chirrut made it a point to give him all the time and the room he needed to get it done.

Until Baze grew tired of this life, and he knew that if he had to live one more day around an unfeeling Chirrut, he would finally die. 

So without telling his husband, he packed up—although he could barely keep the noise down no matter how much he tried, like a meek boy caught in a punishment. He came up to Chirrut wiping down the kitchen counter and slowly, carefully wrapped his arms around him from the back, daring to fill them with his shape completely. Chirrut stopped. Baze tried to fight his tears as he held him for the first time since he came back, pressing a regretful kiss at the back of his head. He told himself he would count to three, and if Chirrut didn’t hold him in turn, he would leave the house and never show himself to his husband ever again. 

Three became five, five became eight. 

Before eight became ten, Baze tore himself from his lost love, the bones of his heart cracking under the weight of his sorrow. He felt like he would die in a week’s time of loneliness but this was his punishment for his shortsightedness. He hurried out of the house before he lost the strength to do it. 

Pain lanced his wrist like a snake bite, momentarily numbing his arm, paralyzing his fingers. He turned back in alarm, staring wildly at the culprit. 

Chirrut only tightened his grasp around his arm, glaring at the wall across him. “And just where do you think you are going, again?” he growled. 

Baze knew that grip like he knew his name. He knew that there were only two ways to be free of it, which was either with a dislocated wrist bone or an arm snapped in half. 

Unless one went back the way he came, forcing the vice-like grip to loosen itself on instinct. That pain was going to leave a bruise in a few hours’ time and he knew it would be days yet before his hand healed completely. 

Baze had never felt more grateful for a pain than he was now, celebrating it when he lashed his arms around his husband and sobbed into his embrace. Chirrut buried his face on his shoulder, hands flying to perch stiffly on his arms. 

“I’m not leaving you,” he promised, voice rough and heavy, choking in his own tears. “I will never leave you again. This I swear not on the Force but on the vows we made to each other. I will never leave you again, Chirrut. I will never…I will never…!”

For the longest time, that was all he could say—but Baze Malbus had no more need for other words for as long as he had his husband in his arms.

⚭

Since then, Baze and Chirrut had fought for more and more times, with silences spanning for hours and days on end. But they were never separated again by anger and disappointment, and whenever one returned home to his husband after a long trip, the other would always receive him with a warm cup of tea, and a warmer kiss. Each year of trials and celebrations added another stone to the foundation of their relationship, until it seemed like there was virtually nothing that the galaxy could do to test the tenacity of their vows.

Out there, in the cold, dark void of space, they were still together, a blessing as any Baze Malbus could conjure, the one good thing that had happened to them in the midst of what they lost—and what others lost still. He sat at a corner of the commandeered cargo shuttle, keeping an eye on Chirrut as though any of the rebels would still have a heart to hurt a finger of his husband. The droid and the captain certainly would not—too absorbed by their navigational controls, too absorbed, on the captain’s part, to pretend he hadn’t had any part to play in the catastrophe that was Eadu. Baze had also observed him from the shadows—and not once did the man turn back to check on his stowaways. 

The pilot, more than certainly, would not. He would not even move a muscle from his place near the wall, shell-shocked and heartbroken. Baze had seen that face for countless times in all his years that he had ceased to be drawn by sympathy to them—but not his husband, Chirrut Imwe, who crouched close to the mumbling pilot, one hand on his hand on the knee. Where the younger man stared about with trauma in his eyes, Chirrut Imwe smiled and responded to his stumbling words with soothing ones. 

“The Force sees and hears all, Bodhi Rook,” Chirrut assured him. “The Force is all. It moves among us, connecting us to everyone and everything. Cast your doubts on it. Trust in it.”

Baze could not say he would have said that last line to Bodhi, who had lost not only his home but also possibly the only friend he had left in a short amount of time, but Baze didn’t know what he could have said either. Between them, Chirrut was always the one who was better with words. 

He rose, bidding goodnight to Bodhi’s folded form. His feet moved soundlessly across the ship but not yet towards his husband waiting for him. He stopped, first, beside the woman, the reason they were all here, like a light that draws the insects. She hadn’t moved since she’d laid down to curl on the bench, grasping her necklace—her kyber crystal which Chirrut had heard across the Old Market, the day they lost the Holy City. She, too, had lost the only thing she had left in the entire galaxy—a father who believed in her. She, too, would not hurt Chirrut. 

Gently, Chirrut laid a hand on her shoulder, long enough for her to know of its presence and whose presence it was, before he let go and finally returned to his husband’s side. He and Chirrut were the lucky ones in comparison to these people, although their own losses were no lesser. It was just that they’d found a way to look past them in each other’s company. 

One day, the ghosts will come to ask for their due—but not yet. Not while they needed to avenge them still. 

Baze shifted aside, moving his feet to make room for Chirrut’s arrival. The man sat, crossing his legs, laying his staff across his knees. 

“She will keep fighting,” Chirrut said quietly, apropos of nothing. 

They had no need for preambles; Chirrut knew Baze had been watching him not because he had felt his gaze on his skin, but because it would be strange if he did not. Baze reached for his hand and held it, fingers closing in firmly, but still gentle. 

“ _We_ will keep fighting,” Baze corrected him, looking at him closely. His husband smiled, bright as the stars they sailed by, and nodded. 

“Calculations complete,” the droid announced, turning to his co-pilot. “Preparing jump to hyperspace.”

“Proceed,” the captain advised curtly. 

Baze extended his arm over Chirrut’s shoulders to pull him in. The man shifted in turn to lay his head on his breast armor, try to get as comfortable as their rather restricted circumstances allowed for him. “Get some sleep,” he said, pressing a kiss on Chirrut’s thin hair. “We’ve still got a jump or two ahead of us.”

Chirrut would not sleep for a long time yet. He would stay awake, thinking, praying. Baze would leave him to it, as he was sure Chirrut wouldn’t mind, leaning back to the wall and closing his eyes. He fell asleep soon after, comforted by the weight of his husband at his side.

⚭

Scarif was a big mistake—the existence of it, the purpose it served, its population and nature and climate, the mission, everything.

Baze would go on to curse it for as long as he was half-awake, and weak from all the blaster shots, and the explosions catching him in their radius. He knew he was bleeding internally, he knew he was parched and burnt, he knew his leg was in a bad way. He knew also that he could die—even now while they were on a friendly ship en route back to Yavin 4. 

He didn’t know if they had won, if the captain and Jyn Erso had made it to a ship, or had made it out of the tower at all. Baze did not know then what this was all for, what he had thrown away his life for, what Chirrut had sacrificed himself for. 

He felt like his entire body had finally given up on him, after years of struggling and fighting and starving. His ears were failing, and his lungs too weak to carry his chest and _breathe_. Every attempt was shallow, sharp like knives, too short to be of any use to him. 

Before he drew the last of them, for one final time, he forced his eyes open, although they weighed like the entire galaxy, and turned to look beside him. 

Chirrut Imwe was hardly recognizable under the mask of bruises, burns, and caked blood—but not to his own husband who would know him even from a distance. His own chest labored to keep him alive but soon, he, too, would expire. 

Baze felt some sense of relief knowing that they’d made it to the end together. He reached out to his husband, as far as he could, and folded his fingers around the few he could find. Chirrut responded with quaking strength, locking into his feeble grasp. Baze felt contented to die in that manner. 

If only they would have let him—but they came for him before the blissful end, pushing him down along the corridor. Baze protested with a noise, fingers searching but finding nothing no matter how long he tried or how loudly he moaned. But no one answered him, or even so much as listened to his pleas. So he started to scream. 

Chirrut’s name filled the emergency ward, drawing all medical units to the task of restraining him before he caused any more trouble on the others or himself. He was crying before he could stop himself, too weak to fight the hands that captured him or the mask falling upon his mouth. He didn’t want to die without his husband by his side but he was already fading. 

The last thing he heard before he blacked out was Chirrut’s voice as it howled for him from beyond the ward.

⚭

There was no rest to be had in Yavin 4, which seemed only to move no matter the time of the day. Growing up in NiJedha, Baze had always been used to living in a sleepless city but that had been a rhythm that he knew like the beating of his heart, a song that lulled him to sleep or roused him awake with the sun.

Neither existed among the clicks of the birds in the forest or the hums of the walls, the corridors filled always with people, the rebel base, never a moment at rest. 

Baze had learned to cope in his short time there thus far, but homesickness was never too far away. In the days since he had healed around the steel implement attached to his leg bone, he had done as his nurses had advised and gone out to exercise, feel the sun and breathe in the humid air to strengthen his body. He had never missed a meal of the day and was always on time for his maintenance bacta baths. On that part, his nurses had nothing to say of him. 

But he was sullen, and quiet, and ill at ease with anyone who tried to be friendly with him, always glaring, always grunting. Would that he had his husband along to soften his mood, if not to explain his roughness. 

Would that his husband was awake, but it had been days since. 

He was never away from him for much longer than was necessary. He was a patient but to his husband, he was his caretaker. Every day would start and end with him sitting next to the man to watch him breathe, feel the steady beat of his pulse more as an assurance than as a plea for company. 

Chirrut was asleep for so long, he had forgotten that his hand could twitch, and that his fingers could curl as though he was reaching for Baze’s fingers on his wrist. Baze knew all about involuntary muscle reflexes and the tricks of the dark so he kept his hopes down, even though he stared at Chirrut’s hand and prayed to whoever, or whatever listened that that was not the last of it. 

The wind answered him, whispering, “Baze…?”

He could hardly believe it. He hadn’t caught Chirrut’s lips moving when he whipped to look at his face but he felt the stubborn strength fighting through his sleeping muscles in his hand. So he dared to hope higher, and responded. “Yes,” he said, voice cracking, “I’m here.”

“Baze Malbus,” the wind sighed—and Chirrut smiled. “Finally.”

Baze was so taken with relief, he could reply with nothing but his name. He carried himself past Chirrut’s shoulders and laid a long-delayed kiss on the man’s chapped lips. That was something that the bacta baths couldn’t take care of although it had restored so much of Chirrut’s features—and him, back to life. His starbird rising again. 

“I did not want to wake up without you,” Chirrut confessed, mumbling before they kissed again. 

“I am sorry I made you wait,” Baze said, carrying his husband’s hand to his face, knowing that Chirrut would like it. Familiarity washed over him when those fingers traced a well-worn path known only to the both of them. It felt like being back home all over again. 

“We are both at fault,” Chirrut replied, carrying his hand over Baze’s hair, following the complicated plaits trailing down his shoulder. “Really?” he asked, laughing in his breath. 

“Really,” Baze confirmed it, laughing as well. They kissed again and again, each one more deliberate than the last. He sniffled as he sat back, his own fingers brushing lightly over Chirrut’s cheek. Those blue eyes looked back to him as though they could see, strangely bright in the lightless room at night. “Are you thirsty?”

“I am.”

“I’ll ask for something for you to drink,” Baze assured him. He rose, one hand wrapped around Chirrut’s as he reached over his headboard and pressed a button on the top panel. “Fixy!” It was the first time he had ever called the FX Droid by its friendly name. “My husband is awake, he wants something to drink.”

“ _By your husband, I assume you are referring to Mister Imwe Chirrut,_ ” the droid responded. “ _Please expect the item Water to be delivered to your ward in 2 minutes. Please stay calm, Mister Malbus Baze._ ”

“You are crying,” Chirrut chuckled when the call finished, his beam bright as a moon. “This is a strange time for tears, Mister Malbus Baze.”

“How can you tell?” Baze challenged him, smiling down at him. “You are still blind.”

“But not deaf.” Chirrut raised a brow. “The droid told you to stay calm. It would have had no reason for it unless it heard you crying.”

“Excuses,” Baze laughed even when he sniffled. 

“Come here.” Chirrut reached for him, although his hand was still heavy with sleep. “Let me dry your tears.” Baze returned to his side and accepted his lips on his eyes, trembling at their warm, featherlike touch, lingering for more. “The Force is with us, Baze Malbus. All is as the Force wills it.”

“For once, I finally believe that is true.”

“No, Baze,” Chirrut said, shaking his head. “You have believed in it even before now. How do you think I found my way back?” he asked, smiling. “If I did not hear you praying through the Force?”

⚭

Several days had passed since.

By now, Baze was used to the sight of his husband sitting upright on a chair in their shared room, looking out to nothing, saying nothing. If only he had thought the same, as well, but he had been living in this private realm while the rest of the base, the world, the galaxy churned on around them. Baze himself felt drawn to them like iron to magnet, but he wanted to join them with his husband, and not alone. 

He could tell that Chirrut wasn’t meditating—his hands weren’t turned up on his knees and his shoulders were too rigid to be in complete relaxation, although they weren’t tensed. Neither was he praying—otherwise, his lips would be forming quiet words, and his shoulders would not be so rigid, as well. They would slouch a little, and his breathing would flow in graceful waves. No, he could only be thinking, yet again. How Baze wished he didn’t know what he was thinking. 

“The red flowers you like are in bloom again,” he said into the quiet room, leaning against the doorframe. He was certain that Chirrut had long detected his presence, simply choosing not to comment again. “The ones that feel like silk. Let’s go and see them.”

Chirrut smiled at his invitation, and nodded. But otherwise, he stayed put. “I’ll be right along,” he promised. He might as well not have. 

By now, Baze knew not to count on it, and he grew just a little more tired of this charade. Chirrut leaned back a little in his seat. With a heavy sigh and heavy feet, he dragged himself towards his husband’s side. 

Chirrut turned towards him as he sat on his own bed near him. “I will be right along, Baze Malbus. We’ll look at the flora together.”

“No, you would not,” Baze said, hunching over, his elbows on his knees. “You would send me out there alone, and you would sit here on your own until I grow tired of waiting for you. Come the next day, you would say the same thing again, anything to send me out of here so you could be left alone. I am not some dumb ox, Chirrut. I am your husband,” he reminded him. “And I would also appreciate it if you stopped lying to me. It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Chirrut’s smile disappeared at the accusations he received. “I’m sorry,” he apologized quietly. “It was not my intention to insult you but I just…really want to be alone sometimes.”

“Sometimes, he says,” Baze Malbus laughed, smiling humorlessly at the wall beside him with a shake of his head. 

“Well, what do you want me to say!” Chirrut demanded, frowning. “I tell you the truth but you refuse it and when I tell you a lie, you would refuse that, as well. What else do you want me to say?”

“The truth would have sufficed!” Baze responded, gaping in shock. “What kind of a question is that, Chirrut?”

“What use is honesty if you refuse it?” Chirrut asked, shoulders sagging, like a weary fighter backed up to his corner of the ring. “What use is anything, really, if you would not listen?”

“ _I_ listen,” Baze insisted, snarling. “But that doesn’t make me like what I hear any more.”

“But what else is there to say!”

“What _is_ there to like in what you say, Chirrut?” Baze groaned. “You are asking to lock yourself up here in this room. Just what do you _think_ was I going to say!”

“That should not have been any concern of yours,” Chirrut said, directing his frown and his blind gaze to his lap, to those hands with its scars from an unfortunate explosion almost invisible if one didn’t know where to look. “You—”

“I am your _husband_ , Chirrut,” Baze repeated impatiently. “What part of our marriage vows makes you think I should not be concerned about you?”

Silence was Chirrut’s response. Through their walls, they heard the clap of something, a mass stumbling into their wall and smothered laughter. A slice of the world that was separate from them and how Baze wished it wasn’t. 

“You, being married to me,” Chirrut spoke again, “should not have to dictate the way you want to live your life. Do not let me keep you here, Baze Malbus—I know there is a mission you wish to join.”

“We don’t have to talk about that yet—”

“I am not yet ready to face the world that is,” Chirrut confessed, brows falling because of it. “I cannot go with you, for as long as I still hear the bells of the Temple of the Kyber ring at dawn, or that of Old Chapa with his cart of sand bread and dirty shig. I am not yet ready to be as strong, and as brave as you, Baze Malbus.”

“You think I don’t think about Jedha, anymore?” Baze asked, shocked. “You really _think_ that I am ready to forget about all that was? That I _would_ even do that?” His surprise drove his finger whipping outwards, to the door that would lead them back to the galaxy. “Chirrut, why do you think I want us to join the mission?”

“Because you are angry at the Empire,” Chirrut said. “For destroying our home. So am I, Baze Malbus!” He whipped to his direction, brows knit together. “But I am still grieving for what we could not save. How do you think I feel being alive and happy here, far away from home, when there are those who helped us in our greatest time of need but we left in the dust?” Chirrut shook his head. “Prayers are all that I can offer to them. And I am not yet done praying. And grieving.” He turned away from Baze, and spoke the last words quietly into the wind. “And regretting.”

Baze had seen Chirrut sad in all the years that they were together, but this was a profound kind of sadness he had not seen before. It was all at once defiant, stubborn, angry, lonely and disappointed. Chirrut looked so forlorn away from his Guardian robes, away from his uneti staff, the last piece of Kyber he had ever had, now gone and lost in the waste of Scarif. 

“But you are happy?” Baze asked, voice low and careful. 

Chirrut turned slightly towards him with a frown. “I am,” he said. “I survived with my husband, what do you think?” he hissed. And because of that, he was angry at himself again. For having something more than the ghosts of the past, for having everything he wanted at the palm of his hands. 

Baze didn’t know how else to talk to him. He raised his fingers to his forehead and kneaded at the ache. It was not wrong to grieve but it was wrong to forget about everything else. _Everything._ “Then let’s do something about it,” he said, in a spark of inspiration that seemed to have taken hold of his tongue. His hand fell back to his lap as Chirrut oriented himself to him again. “Let’s join the mission.”

“Baze, I have already told you.”

“I want to join this mission,” Baze spoke quickly to cut Chirrut off. “Because I am angry at the Empire. For destroying our home. And I want to do everything in my power to stop them. Because that will make them angry, as they have made me angry.”

“That sounds spectacularly petty, Baze Malbus,” Chirrut said, brows rising. “I hope you have not forgotten how the Empire behaves when they are angered. You cannot go blindly into this without thinking about the little people.”

“That’s why I want us to join the mission!” Baze said, for perhaps the third time already. He was growing weary of the subject but he would not give up, and he would persist for Chirrut, too. “For as long as there are worlds out there who cannot fight against the Empire’s boot, the Empire will keep growing. And devouring and abusing. Somewhere out there is a temple that rings its bells for the faithful in these dark times, and somewhere out there is an old man singing chanteys as he sells his goods. I was not able to save Jedha, but I still have a chance to protect them from the Empire.”

“But they are not Jedha,” Chirrut protested, brows curled. 

It was an unfortunate truth, but it couldn’t be helped. Baze sighed, shaking his head. “They can’t become Jedha, Chirrut,” he said, voice quiet. 

And that seemed to hurt Chirrut who saw only one thing: these planets Baze wanted to save were not Jedha. 

It exhausted Baze. Chirrut exhausted Baze. 

“Do you also know that I miss my husband?” Baze asked suddenly. “That I miss it when he smiles and fights me for the pettiest things like how I brew my tea and how I slurp my noodles?”

For that, for those reminders of some semblance of a life they used to have, Chirrut grinned. Even when those, too, made him miss dear NiJedha. 

Baze growled out in frustration, raking his bound hair back. “Chirrut, I am the one who lived!” he cried. “But why does it feel like I am the one who is dead?”

“Do not say that!” Chirrut warned him, eyes and mouth round with alarm. Then he frowned again, as if Baze’s words had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth. “If you wish to go to this mission, then you must. You can’t stop yourself on account of me.”

Baze was surprised to hear the words that came rushing out of Chirrut’s mouth. Their meaning was plain but he had heard more than what they said. “Are you asking me to leave?” he asked, half-incredulous. 

“Are you?” Chirrut asked back, with a vague note of hope. 

Baze felt his frown digging deep into his own cheeks. There was no sense talking to a man who did not wish to listen. This conversation had been doomed from the start. “Yes,” he said, rising. Before he left, though, he made sure to make his own intentions clear, dipping closely to his husband’s face to say, “But not because I want to.”

He marched out, short of leaving a trail of smoke behind him. Outside, back in the hubbub of the rebel base unaware of the couple’s misunderstanding, Baze took the time to breathe in the too-fragrant air and gather himself. 

Before he took off down the hall in search of the rebel captain Cassian Andor, to sign up for the mission his husband was sending him off to. Far away where he could not bother him and his regrets.

⚭

That night, he remembered Scarif. And this time, he couldn’t get out.

He was running between crowding trees, dodging blaster shots and the splash of debris and for as long as he could remember, that was all he had been doing. His cannon was out, heavy as a mountain in his weary left and hot like magma from all the shots unfired. Here and there, he could hear the screams of particle beams, the roar of diving engines, voices crying, mixing the angry and the scared with the dead. Every explosion felt like a punch in the guts, in the face, on his chest and every breath drawn felt like an ugly negotiation with his battered lungs. 

But he was still alive, still surviving, still running on leaden, numbing feet—and he hated it. He thought there had to be an end to this torture even when it was nowhere yet in sight. If life had an end, then surely the laws for this one, too, must follow. He shut his eyes tight, thinking that if he couldn’t see where he was going, he might meet up with his death sooner rather than later. And then everything disappeared in a roar of smoke and fire. 

Baze gave a startled noise when he jumped awake in his bed. He stared up at the dark ceiling, mouth agape and frozen open, his heart fighting its way through it. His breaths raced after each other, deep and painful. He tried to swallow but that had only wasted precious time he could have used for air. 

Recovery took its sweet time; soon, his pulse eased and his breathing slowed down but his mind and his ears were still seeing, and hearing phantoms of his nightmare. “I’m one with the Force,” he gasped into the darkness, while he saw the jungle burn and the grenade set off, “and the Force is with me. One with the Force,” he inhaled, “and Force is with me. Am one with the Force,” he went on robotically, “and Force is with me. With me…I am one with the Force…one with the—Force is with me. And I am…one with…Force. Is with me…”

He hadn’t caught the sound of shifting fabric next to him, the feet on the cold floor, the stumbling weight. He jumped when those hands landed on his side, staring aghast at Chirrut’s appearance in his periphery. Baze forgot his prayer, mumbling Chirrut’s name instead with a quiet plea. Chirrut’s hand patted around the bed for his, grasping it tight when it was given him.

He whispered shushes, finding a place on his bedside. Baze had calmed down a great deal since his husband had arrived although he still recited some semblance of the prayer in his head, even when it was already all mixed up in itself. 

“The Force is with me,” Chirrut began slowly, looking at Baze’s pillow, “and I am with the Force.”

“And I fear nothing,” Baze followed, as easily as breathing, “for all, is as the Force wills it.”

Chirrut smiled and started again, “The Force is with me.”

“And I am with the Force,” Baze continued. “And I fear nothing, for all is as the Force wills it. The Force is with me, and I am with the Force. The Force is with me…” He went on and on on his own, orienting his breathing, his heartbeat to the prayer, while Chirrut found his chest and laid his head down on it to listen. 

“I will go with you to this mission,” Chirrut said after they’d sat up and arranged themselves comfortably around each other so that Baze’s back was on the headboard and Chirrut leaned back on him. His fingers traced patterns over Baze’s palm turned up, dancing idly over its calloused breadth. “All is as the Force wills it. You are my husband, and I have a duty towards you.”

“Chirrut, this isn’t about words anymore, spoken only in private,” Baze said, watching his husband’s invisible work. “This is a mission. Things could get ugly.”

“No, it’s not,” Chirrut agreed, tracing the lines over his palm. “It’s about a promise I made, to my husband and to the Force. And what I mean to do with it, and how to live my life.”

“We might not have space for a stowaway anymore,” Baze chuckled. “The slots are full. I’m not sure Cassian will appreciate us going over the ship’s capacity.”

“So what?” Chirrut asked. “We all know that weight limits are not definitive. You never let anyone stop you, Baze. Why start now?”

Baze pressed his lips at the back of Chirrut’s head. “Because I was contented knowing that if things went south, you would at least be safe in here.” Chirrut elbowed him and he jumped. 

His husband snickered. “Sap,” he said. “You don’t honestly mean that.”

“I don’t,” Baze admitted. “But I do not want you to go simply because I am going.”

Chirrut shook his head. “I did some thinking, when you left,” he said. “And it pains me to say this, but for once, you are right.” Baze bopped him in the head as he laughed quietly. Chirrut himself laughed. “I should not let Jedha stop me from protecting others. At the very least, Killi Gimm will be disappointed in me if I let her memory hold me back.” Baze had not heard her name spoken for so long, it brought a painful smile to his face. “I think…we ought to take a page from the Gimms’ book. We must do what we must.”

“Have you finished praying?”

Chirrut did not answer immediately. “No,” he said eventually. “And I don’t think I will ever. I fear I will die without having finished, in fact.” He turned slightly towards his husband. “And you? Have you finished praying?”

Baze shook his head. “I never even started. I have forgotten how to do it. But what my faith can no longer answer for, my hands will. I fight with my heart as you pray with yours. If we can end this Empire, then I think that will account for something.” He saw Chirrut smile at him, and he smiled back. “Stay with me, Chirrut Imwe,” he whispered all of a sudden. 

Chirrut turned, draping an arm across him, as Baze slid back down his bed, pulling his blanket over them. The bed was a tight fit but they would manage—they had been in tighter accommodations. This was the first time in a long while that they were going to sleep in the same bed again. Ever since they were evicted from the Temple, they had gotten used to sleeping separately when they weren’t having sex. 

Baze wondered if that was going to be the last time finally that he and Chirrut would spend the night together—but that had been the same thought he had after the Temple, and after the Holy City was occupied, and before the Gimms’ children left the planet, and after they escaped Jedha, and Eadu, and Scarif. And after all that, they were still together. 

So maybe, he thought as he closed his eyes, and listened to the rhythm of Chirrut’s breathing, maybe this time won’t be the last time either.

⚭

It had been some time since the entire crew had come together again since the Battle of Scarif. How fitting that they should meet again, one year after the Battle of Yavin.

Both Bodhi and Cassian, and for that matter his droid K-2SO (who Bodhi liked to call Kay Two-point-oh, being restored from backups and spare parts after the first was destroyed in their first mission) had made surprise appearances, the former having dropped by only to deliver a wounded cargo, the latter coming fresh from a reconnaissance mission that ended abruptly due to inclement weather. Come dawn, he would return to Outpost Delta where he was temporarily assigned; of the six of them, only Jyn took up permanent residence in Echo Base while the logistics for her next mission was still being negotiated. 

Baze and Chirrut themselves were only around until their corvette had finished restocking and refueling before they took off to the other side of the Outer Rim. They had only expected to meet up with Jyn for the anniversary of the Death Star’s defeat before they ran into a bloodshot Bodhi demanding immediate medical assistance. 

Now they sat all together at the corner of the main hangar, well apart from the heart of the celebration. It had been fun while it lasted;they’d managed to fill the table up with just themselves, the food and their stories—their present preoccupations, their pasts, their futures. 

Baze had caught sight of Cassian as Jyn and Bodhi were comparing notes on jumpstarting space cruisers, relevant for times in need, and saw him shake his head covertly. He would not propose tonight. The captain had approached Baze and his husband a few months back about finally marrying Jyn but circumstances have been particularly difficult of late. Just a few days ago, they’d had a rather heated conversation about a future outside of the Alliance, a family in the age of the Empire. Since then, this was the first time they’d seen each other again in person. 

Chirrut had wanted to meet with Jyn, likely alone, because of that. Baze turned to him, and as if he saw him, he smiled and nodded. 

Soon Bodhi was asleep, head on the table. He had been awake for the entire flight, staying under the Empire’s radar while administering first aid to his hysterical passenger whose grasp on Basic was rough at best. K-2SO had been sent away to run diagnostics on the hovercraft they would be taking back with them to Outpost Delta. 

Which left Baze and Chirrut on one side of the table, and on the other, Jyn and Cassian on either side of the snoring Bodhi, peeling apart every detail of Cassian’s current assignment. Every detail—just to give them something to talk about. 

Too comfortable to think about decorum any longer, Baze had chosen to slide low and rest his head on Chirrut’s shoulder, watching the young couple work around their own pride—and longing. It was a familiar sight that put the ghost of a smile on Baze’s face. One part of him felt pleased and relieved that this was no longer his and Chirrut’s life. 

The other felt a little disappointed that this was not their world. Perhaps it was a sign of aging that he wanted to see how it ended for Jyn and Cassian. Perhaps he was getting too soft…

He might have laughed if Chirrut hadn’t suddenly stood up and nudged him to come along. He had no choice; he pulled his weight off the chair and rose after his husband. 

“Some of us will have to take our leave now,” Chirrut said to excuse themselves, picking up his retractable walking staff. Baze stood just to his back. “We are not as young and spry as we wish we were, so I’m afraid we will have to leave you to clean up after us.” He gestured vaguely towards Bodhi’s sleeping form. Bringing him safely to his temporary quarters would be a good reason to keep them talking a little longer. Baze had to eat his grin. 

“Goodnight, then,” Chirrut said, waving. Baze followed after him. 

“May the Force be with you,” Jyn called after them, and then Cassian, too. They may no longer see each other again in the morning. 

Chirrut grinned and nodded deeply. “May the Force of others be with you,” he replied. 

Jyn and Cassian were soon negotiating how best to carry an unconscious, overworked pilot. They disappeared behind a wall when Baze and Chirrut turned to a hallway heading for their own apartment. They had an early start ahead of them. 

But that wouldn’t keep Chirrut from laying a hand on Baze’s backside. And this time, Baze couldn’t help but laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> [ _Belong_](https://open.spotify.com/track/4oiDiCHDEQFRGPVHCPuMKc) is a song by San Fermin from the album of the same title [_Belong_](https://open.spotify.com/album/5W8pjOtovHTPVUSZs77ebB) while [_Bones_](https://open.spotify.com/track/6KXohEBsBvXwYoZjbM0XcQ) is a song by Low Roar feat. Jófríður Ákadóttir from the album [_Once In a Long, Long While..._](https://open.spotify.com/album/7f7U2QDkW5bjMoqCMfx0EA) I couldn't decide which track to use as the title so I decided to use both.


End file.
